


Sburb Extended Endgame Guide

by Brickman



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Alternate Universe - Replay Value, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-03-09
Packaged: 2021-03-13 09:47:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 6
Words: 8,709
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29524542
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Brickman/pseuds/Brickman
Summary: Sburb replayer brickMan is here to bring you some juicy information about part of the Sburb experience that gets left out of most guides. But be warned: Most players skip this portion of the game for a reason.
Comments: 6
Kudos: 15





	1. Intro to the End

**Author's Note:**

> This work exists in the universe spawned by the [Sburb Glitch FAQ](https://archiveofourown.org/works/340777/chapters/551606) by GodsGiftToGrinds. Ideally you should read his fic first (if for no other reason than that it's great). But this guide focuses on part of Sburb that he "didn't get to" in that guide so you'll mostly be able to follow along without reading it.
> 
> This guide was "written" after [my previous work](https://archiveofourown.org/works/523876/chapters/926957) within this AU and by the same in-universe author. But you shouldn't need to read one to get the other.

Hey, it's ya boi brickMan here. Everyone's favorite Sburb replayer! Except for the people who currently aren't talking to me because of capital-P Politics. Yeah act all high and mighty while you can, you'll see I was right in the end.

Ever since the, ahem, "incident" with stopwatchRondevous, I have had my ear glued to the ground of the Sburb game-breaking community. And I'm here to tell you about some really exciting new developments involving Sburb's endgame.

No, not the Taking of the Heart. The ***endgame***. No not the Reckoning, the part before that. The big battlefield on Skaia. That endgame.

It's no secret that literally nobody bothers with this chapter of Sburb, and there's a pretty good reason: It's (almost) impossible. Once you enter this part of the game, ***nothing*** will push back the clock on the Reckoning anymore, so you have ***at best*** three weeks to wrap up this chapter. Any mistakes eat chunks out of that time limit. Add to that some confusingly backwards progression requirements, high level foes, and a high risk of both Scepterwraiths and Ringwraiths.

It's no wonder that most players just take a vacation after doing the Taking of the Heart.

The rewards aren't even that good. You get some friendly white chess pieces to help you during the final boss (who still die in one hit). If you jump through ***all*** the hoops in time you get a "friendly" Scepterwraith to help fight the Black King, but it raises his stats to compensate. That's about it.

Oh yeah, and if you play your cards right you can _***break the script that destroys your home planet***_. Some people think that's a big deal.

### You can do WHAT?

Now please allow me a moment to rein in your expectations. You can't actually save your home planet, at least not that easily. Everyone there is still marked with timeline doom as soon as the first player slots in their Sburb disk. You can stop Sburb from killing everyone via meteor, but it'll use exiles as a backup plan. It's just much clumsier doing so.

We've only pulled this off twice so far, so data is limited. The first time, one of the exiles pissed off the debug NPC enough that it roasted the whole planet in green fire. We're not really sure ***what*** the exile did on the other Earth, but it dropped the average global temperature to about -80 degrees Celsius for a couple years, and we're pretty sure it was his fault.

So no, you can't save the planet outright. But you can buy everybody an extra 2-3 months of living in a Final Destination movie, which is... probably preferable to being dead.

But the really exciting part is, nothing born or created during that 2-3 months counts as Doomed. A lot of Seers spent a LOT of hours verifying this. So if we ever manage to do this consistently, we could seed the planet with, I dunno, robot nannies or self-replicating androids or something. We might someday save enough people to rebuild. On OUR terms, not just another carapace city.

It feels like a long shot, and it is. But hey, even if we fail, it's a massive slap in the face towards Sburb at its worst. And that's worth my time at least.

Of course, this is all a pipe dream if the endgame retains its current near-impossible status. We need to get much better. Which is why I'm writing this guide, to put together as much of our info as possible in one place. I think with time, we'll look at this questline the same way as the Denizen: Bullshit, but bullshit we know how to handle.

That said, please be warned: You will probably fail if you attempt this. Only two sessions have pulled it off successfully since we started paying attention, and I wasn't in either. My first attempt we ran out of time, and on attempt number two we spawned a Ringwraith and just did the Reckoning normally before she could catch up with us.

Actual permadeath isn't the most likely failure mode, but I can't say that you ***won't*** die.

### MINIMUM REQUIREMENTS

To even attempt this, you will need the following:

  * Zero permadead players. Yeah I realize this one by itself is ***already*** a pretty tough requirement. But dead coplayers count against your time limit, and you shouldn't be taking on extra challenges anyways.
  * Nothing the game sees as "negative progress" in anyone's character arc (this can include: brute-force killing your Denizen, blowing up either Dream Moon, blowing up most of your Land, and some other things that you really shouldn't do).
  * A minimum of 8 players.
  * At least one of the Prospit special agents not dead (normally I would never condone killing these guys anyways, but they have been driving me so far up the wall that I'd consider it).
  * Endgame levels, gear, skills, and competency. You will be fighting a lot and the enemies have high stats. Do all the prep work you need, the clock doesn't really turn nasty until you set foot on Skaia.



### ACTUAL REQUIREMENTS

To have a chance at winning, you will need the following:

  * As many players as possible. You really do need to be everywhere at once. The winning sessions had 12 and 16 players respectively.
  * A Time, Mind or Light player with a title conducive to scrying on hypothetical timelines. You want this player to be scrying constantly, both to advance your own goals and to head off Ringwraith and Scepterwraith situations. I can't even imagine doing this run blind.
  * Several players with high reputation on each dream moon. Ideally everyone has decent reputation on both.
  * The Derse Archagent must be dead. Ideally the other ones too. But also you can't kill Jack too early because... yeah this needs its own chapter.
  * Most of your team already at God Tier. Aside from the obvious reasons this is helpful, you are a LONG way away from the closest quest bed. But it may also help to have one or two non-tiered players.
  * At least one player who is really dumb. Maybe two. Yes, it helps.



### Obligatory Shoutouts

  * A big thanks to all the assorted game-breakers and researchers who helped make this guide (and the endgame itself) possible.
  * An even bigger thank you to my teammates for putting up with this extra bullshit with me, both sessions. And to my teammates in the current session who wanted to sit it out: I totally get it, you don't gotta ask me twice.
  * And the biggest round of applause to all the players in the two sessions which actually pulled off this madness: 
    * The groundbreaking first session, led by **hadronDivider** (grand-master of Sburb code-diving and all-around cool dude) and **shatteredDream** (excellent Seer no matter what aspect she rolls).
    * And the equally amazing second session, led by **crimsonSkyline** (who honestly kinda scares me, but god damn can she get things done) and **cameraAction** (who I haven't met but assume is cool).



I highly recommend checking out the full session reports posted by both teams.


	2. Intro to Bullshit

### How bad could it be?

So you're probably thinking that the gameplay on Skaia is pretty straightforward. That's how it works when you go there normally, right? You show up near the Black King, a few waves of black chess soldiers and maybe an airship get in your way, you find the black king, you fight. Maybe it's just like that, extended over a couple weeks?

After all, you've already done all your story stuff. You matured as a person, you befriended and defeated your nemesis, you grappled with your worst doubts, you healed and killed(?) your Land, and you went through all the plot points in your official Character Arc (TM). What bullshit could there be left to do?

Oh you poor fool. Prepare yourself for one more round of Sburb at its Sburbiest.

What actually happens is, you show up, find the White King, and ask him what to do. He directs you to some strategically significant black chess soldiers, you go fight them, you come back. He directs you to another group of enemies. And after three or four cycles you realize that yes, ignoring his instructions hurts the Prospit War Effort and knocks chunks off your time limit, but doing all this busywork doesn't actually move you closer to the goal. It's the Denizen all over again, but with a time limit.

No, what you have to do to progress is suffer through a series of "trials" or hardships to prove yourself "worthy" of reaching the Black King and claiming the Ultimate Reward. The quests given out by the White King, and the black chess soldiers in general, are just a backdrop for encountering those hardships.

So yes, now that you've bested the boss that dies when you don't want to kill it, and the quest that ends when you don't want it to end, and the boss that's just a terrible therapist, it's time to round out the cycle. Welcome to the quest that only completes if you convince the game that you're doing badly at it!

### How it works

So the idea here is that you're supposed to prove yourself to be true heroes or something by "persevering" through hardships on the Skaian battlefield. To prove yourself worthy of doing something that it'll let you do anyways if the timer runs out.

Each trial generally requires you to either do something risky, have something bad happen to you, or both. Oh joy!

The format here is as aggravating as ever. Whenever you meet the criteria for a trial, one of the enemies nearby will be carrying a medallion that looks like your player pendant with the colors inverted. If you defeat the enemy and then come within a short distance of their body, the medallion will float in the air, start glowing, and then zoom over and be absorbed into your chest.

The enemy who gets the medallion will be the most "notable" in their group. If either are present it's usually either an airship captain or one of the non-generic battlefield NPCs. Even if that NPC is a pawn. Note that the medallion is created when you meet the criteria, they were NOT retroactively always holding it (sorry Time cheaters!).

The trials can ONLY be completed by interacting with black chess soldiers on the battlefield. PvP won't help, self inflicted hardship won't help, thwarting the Special Agents won't help, adventuring elsewhere won't help. They also ALL require you to "persevere", which means any death (permanent or not) invalidates it.

Also, they mostly require you have some plausible reason for doing whatever you did besides "that's what the trial called for" (even if that's the real reason).

So far so good? Well there's a few catches. Each player can only complete one trial, and each trial can only be completed once. There's a cooldown of about an hour between triggering them, so you can't complete several in one go. And of course, of ***course*** , there's no visual indicator when an enemy has one of these medallions.

This causes three obvious problems.

  1. The party member you were counting on to complete one trial can accidentally complete one of the others, in which case you can kiss your session plan goodbye.
  2. If you fail to kill that enemy right away, you have to somehow track them down, despite them being identical to other enemies and you not having been notified when it happened. For that matter, if a teammate kills that enemy later while you're not present, the trial won't become complete until you go near its corpse (though you can get around this by obsessively searching the corpses of any notable NPC--the medallion is a physical object until you absorb it).
  3. You can be invalidated from completing whatever trial you're attempting on account of having already completed another trial without even knowing about it.



In all three cases, the solutions are about the same. Make sure everyone is extremely cognizant of what the trial conditions are, have a flexible session plan, and have your Time, Mind or Light player scry possible timelines like crazy. If you know you triggered a trial but can't finish the enemy, I'd suggest tagging them with a paintball gun or something to help you find them layer.

Oh yeah, and

4\. You cannot complete this quest with fewer than eight players, although the game will certainly let you try. For some reason this quest doesn't scale with party size.

I cannot stress enough that all this is happening under a strict time limit. Since you've already closed the book on your character development and your land quests, neither of those things count as "game progress" anymore. And since you're directly interacting with the battlefield, Sburb is no longer willing to let you interact with the "Prospit War Effort" as an abstract concept anymore. Which means that from the second you meet the White King, there is ***no action*** you can take that pushes back the Reckoning clock.

In theory only one of the trials requires a big time investment, but in practice it's hard to screw up on purpose.


	3. The Trials: Part 1

### So what are these trials anyways?

Given how varied the trials are, my personal theory is that someone tried to design a normal quest, realized they only have one copy of the battlefield to work with, and clumsily tried to split it up among the whole team. But that's just my guess.

The archbishop who hangs out with the White King will give you hints about what you have to do if you ask him. His hints are a bit vague, but they're not randomized so I can just tell you without the bullshit.

Since this is arguably the meat of the guide, I'll split it into two chapters. Remember you can do these in any order.

#### 1\. "The hero shall be outwitted by the enemy, but persevere."

Starting off with a bang, huh? The black chess soldiers are certainly smarter than the underlings you fight in most of the game, but they're not ***that*** smart. They're still just AI.

Hopefully you've got a doofus on your team, or they manage to lay a good ambush and then fail to kill anyone with it. If not you may be trying for a while with this one. You can't really be "outsmarted" on purpose. You'll want to lean heavily on your timeline-scryer to find a scenario where someone triggers this.

One very frustrating way this can play out is with stealth. Hiding or escaping from a player usually counts as outsmarting them. In this case, the game will break with its usual logic and give the medallion to even a lowly pawn. Again, there's no indicator it happened and you can't win without hunting down that enemy.

Have I mentioned yet that only two teams have ever beaten this questline since we started tracking it?

Oh yeah, and I cannot believe that I have to say this, but here's a free Pro Gamer Tip(TM): When you're doing your session planning, you probably shouldn't say anything to the person you're expecting to complete this trial. Adam. Like, just don't say anything at all. Adam. How exactly did you think she was going to react, Adam? What made you think that was a thing that needed to be said out loud, Adam?

Maybe next time you're looking for "the dumb one" in a session, you should check a mirror.

#### 2\. "The hero shall pursue their foes across the entire battlefield, and persevere."

This is the really time-consuming one. But as long as you don't accidentally trigger another trial halfway through, it's the least likely to cause trouble. If you complete it as a pair (which you should), and both are valid, it goes to whoever did the most fighting.

The goal is extremely literal. You have to traverse a distance equal to the circumference of Skaia, without backtracking or crossing your path, while always moving towards an enemy (or group of enemies) that you are aware of. It does not need to be in a straight line. Fighting is technically optional but not really avoidable, especially if you want to avoid triggering the third trial.

If you lose track of all nearby enemies, anyone with any scrying ability should be able to tell you which way to go.

For some reason, if a Knight, Page, or Scout sets out to do this trial, they get a huge boost to their Roleplay Coefficient. No, not just a boost, I mean a ***huge*** boost. Like, this was how we finally verified that ARC isn't stored in a 32 bit integer. That kind of huge. Too bad it's only temporary.

It's a rare guaranteed-helpful bug, so do take advantage. But bring a buddy along anyways, even if you're Hope and "don't need one". This area is not balanced for going solo, no matter how high your stats are.

#### 3\. "The hero shall be forced to flee the enemy, but persevere."

This one's a problem for the exact opposite reason as the others: It is so easy to trigger that you will almost certainly do so on accident, at the most inconvenient time.

Literally all you have to do is run away from a fight, or a prospective fight. It can be for any reason: The enemy is too strong, you're low on health or pluck, you need to go help another player, this fight doesn't line up with your plan for who does what trial, etc. Literally the only reason that doesn't count is "I'm running away to trigger the running away trial". Heck, even if you are triggering it on purpose it works as long as there's another plausible excuse for running away.

Of course, running away means almost by default that you will fail to kill whichever enemy gets the medallion. Because nobody thought this questline through at all.

You should try to knock this one out as early as possible, by whatever means necessary, so it can't screw you over later. Ideally, you want one player to flee while another player finishes off the enemies. Failing that, I still stand by my paintball gun strategy.

#### 4\. "The hero shall ignore their injury to defeat a powerful foe, and persevere."

This one's not so much hard to set up as just plain dangerous. Unlike all the others, you CAN self-inflict the hardship here.

All you have to do is kill a frigate-or-bigger airship miniboss, while having less than 25% of your health when you start, without any healing, and with you dealing more than half of the damage to the boss. Easy, right?

You don't need to hold its aggro to finish the quest, but airship artillery doesn't really care who has "aggro". Their "aggro" is mostly just "everything below me."

While it sounds suicidal on the surface, some aspects have it easier than others here:

  * Mist players are the obvious choice, since they use their Pluck as a second health bar. Turn **[Reverberata]** off, get punched a couple times, then turn it back on. Presto, you're at "critically low" HP but are really at nearly full strength. Also, if you're the type who's willing to copy **[Dreams Don’t Die]** despite the bugs, it's stupid good in this scenario. That's actually a pretty good cheese strategy in general. 
    * Make sure none of your other teammates do any healing at the same time that you're doing this trial as Mist. You get three guesses why and the first two don't count.
  * Hope players have several buffs that get stronger at low health, most notably **[Dreams Don’t Die]**. The **[Cut Me Down Or Let Me Run]** -> **[Either Way It's All Gonna Burn]** combo is also completely bonkers for this scenario. You ***probably*** won't one-shot the boss, but it'll be close.
  * Sand players... Airships tend to fall apart "on their own" when Sand players are nearby. Even more than other bosses. I don't know why and I wouldn't tell you if I did. Just accept that it's a favorable matchup and move on.
  * Time players who are good enough to pull off a stable loop in combat can cheat. Aggro the boss at low health, then have your future self (who is at full health) come fight the boss for you. As long as neither of you use a healing item it counts. That said, you may want to keep your Time player available for the last Trial instead.
  * Blood players are almost completely incapable of doing this trial, or even helping. It's not that the game thinks your HP is higher than it is, it just treats your buffs as if you're constantly being healed. Try not to back yourself into a scenario where the Blood player is the only one left to take on this trial.
  * Life players... I shouldn't need to explain why this is a bad matchup.
  * Void players are a mixed bag. Sometimes it works normally, sometimes it just doesn't trigger despite doing everything right, and sometimes it'll just randomly trigger from killing an airship boss even at full health. Both bugs probbl hppn bcs t cnt s yr stts, bcs vd s lwys lk tht. ts nt sbtl. W dnt know what triggers it, but come on. This is Void. What were you expecting?



One more important warning: If you attempt this trial and fail, it ***will*** count as a heroic death. Don't ask me why.

Anyways, those first four trials should serve as a nice appetizer for the headache you've signed yourself up for. Don't worry, it gets much worse.


	4. The Trials: Part 2

### Even more trials

Last time I walked you through the first four trials, so now it's time to finish the set. There's two more on about the same level as the first ones, and then the last two... are not on that level.

#### 5\. "The hero shall work themselves to exhaustion, but persevere."

This one is more annoying than dangerous. You have to literally pass out from exhaustion while doing battlefield tasks. As long as you're not going solo, and aren't facing anything unusually dangerous, your teammates should be able to bail you out.

It seems a little more flexible than the others in that you don't have to be actively fighting black chess pieces. You just need to be doing something "important" the entire time. Just do a marathon of the white king's quests and you're fine.

If you're not near any enemies when you pass out, it can be hard to track down the medallion. What else is new?

Hope, Rage and Life all have buffs which let you ignore physical exhaustion indefinitely, so the game will ***not*** let you complete this trial if you are those aspects or are adventuring with them. Plan accordingly. Also, be aware that certain titles (mostly the shenanigans classes) will incur a substantial hit to their roleplay coefficient for attempting this trial. Use your judgment.

Conversely, if you know what you're doing, Heart and Doom are both capable of inflicting debuffs which leave a coplayer so tired that you'll get this in a snap. The game doesn't consider that cheating. Just follow the golden rules: Do nothing without informed consent, and do nothing that you can't un-do.

#### 6\. "The hero shall understand the true cost of war, and persevere."

This one's a freebie. All you gotta do is kill some black chess soldiers but feel bad about it. I guess? It's stupid because these guys ***obviously*** aren't people. Literally 95% of the enemies in this area are copy-pasted from the same 15 templates. No variation, no personality.

No I'm serious. Have you looked at a chess pawn's shiny recently? They've only got half a shiny! They don't even have names! I shouldn't still be hearing arguments about this. It isn't just my opinion, it's a science fact! I don't see people arguing for imps being people, and they've got a better-looking shiny than the chess guys.

ANYWAYS.

Statistically, the odds are your party has at least one person gullible enough to believe that the chess people are worth feeling bad for. Failing that, there's still ***some*** real NPCs scattered across the battlefield, half of whom are black. So if you examine all the corpses you'll find one worth feeling bad about eventually.

Overall this is the same gimmick as the Denizen, but a quarter-baked instead of half-baked.

#### 7\. "The hero shall face true danger, and persevere."

Easily wins the award for least helpful description. The trigger couldn't be simpler though: All you have to do is almost die.

Needless to say, this is a capital-P Problem.

Just being low on HP or tagged with nasty status effects isn't good enough. You have to genuinely believe that you are going to permadie within the next thirty seconds, that you've already used up all your escape options and no allies are coming. If you think you have a safety net left, you won't complete this trial.

You also need to not actually die.

This is another one that very strongly favors Hope players, since a bunch of their abilities get stronger according to that same condition. But the Hope player ***knows*** that, so unless they're well and truly dumb the situation needs to be even ***more*** dire for them to trigger it.

Really though, by design it is impossible to get this one on purpose, at least for yourself. This is entirely about having a good timeline scryer to find the scenarios that will almost-but-not-quite kill you. You also generally have to lie to people to make it work. Like, if your space player is on standby ready to yank you out of the fire, you need to believe that they're busy somewhere else. But if you start second-guessing what people said they're doing...

If this is the one part that we never manage to make routine, I wouldn't be too surprised.

We have had a little success with using Rage to make a coplayer more scared, so maybe there's a little hope. Heart modifications... are less promising. Don't try it.

One more thing: Since you have to believe that you're about to permadie, this one is much easier to get for players who are not god tier. Those players also have extra options for revival if things go wrong, but if you actually "die" (even briefly) that won't complete the trial.

Oh, and one more one more thing: This should go without saying, but afterward you still need to hunt those enemies down again and beat them properly. Bring a bigger team for the rematch.

#### 8\. "The hero shall be forced to sacrifice that which they value to succeed, but persevere."

I saved the best for last. By which I mean the worst. This one is so awful it makes most of the others look like the Prospit cupcake-eating sidequest (not a real sidequest).

For this you have to lose or leave behind "something you value", either to escape from danger (another reason to knock out the fleeing trial asap) or to pursue or defeat a group of enemies. The thing of value can be a memento from your life before Sburb, or a firmly held moral code, or the last thing a friend gave you before they died. But let's be real, you know and I know that Sburb wants you to sacrifice a teammate for this trial.

Please do not sacrifice a teammate for this trial.

There's no mystical altar or secret code phrase you're supposed to use for the sacrifice. It just has to happen organically, like most of the other trials. You have to stumble into a situation where you say "Huh, if I leave behind ___ I can run fast enough to achieve my goal, but they'll definitely die."

Technically, the thing doesn't have to be destroyed, but you have to earnestly believe that it will be. If one of your players is the type to swoop in and save that thing as soon as your back is turned, you should take steps to prevent them from doing so. The last thing you want is to doubt that your sacrifice will really be lost, and then have it really be lost anyways.

We've found two techniques that work consistently without permanently screwing you over.

The first technique (which is how shatteredDream did it in the first session) is to let a doomed Time player do it. As long as they don't trigger one of the other trials first, a Time player who leaves a doomed timeline will (usually) fulfill the conditions for this trial. You need to have all 8 medallions on hand while talking to the White King, but it won't check again after that. Even if the Time clone dies on the way to the Black King, it still works.

Be sure to kill some chess dudes ***before*** you leave, so that you absorb the medallion from the doomed timeline (which is expendable) and not the medallion from the Alpha timeline (which can only spawn once). You can and will softlock the quest if you do this wrong.

If your time player makes a doomed branch timeline and it ***doesn't*** trigger this trial, you should probably drop whatever you're doing to give them a hug. That and some therapy.

All this being said, ***please don't*** make a doomed timeline just to complete this trial. I'd go so far as to say that nothing related to the extended endgame is worth spawning a doomed timeline for, ever. Better to just do a normal win. We're doing all this for the ghost of a chance that we can maybe someday save a few lives from somebody's pre-session Earth if we somehow become good enough to do it consistently. Let's not sully it with actual, tangible player deaths.

The first two sessions gets a pass, since we really did need to test how high the stakes are. But if you spawn a bunch of doomed timelines ***now*** , that's pretty hard to justify.

The second, (slightly) less awful technique is to drag along your favorite follower NPC from earlier in the game. Most Carapaces won't follow you to the battlefield, but Consorts fit conveniently in your inventory. So bring them here, let them follow you around the battlefield, really bask in that companionship, and... wait for an opportunity to let them get brutally murdered. Ugh.

They can't come with you to the next session, so tactically it's the right move. But it feels very wrong.

Did I mention that the purpose of all these trials is to prove that you are heroes who are "worthy" enough to face the Black King and claim the Ultimate Reward? Again, that was the whole point of this questline.

That's really Sburb in a nutshell, isn't it?


	5. Special Agents

### Special Agents

Picture for a moment the imps that you see during the first minutes of Sburb. The way more of them keep appearing faster than you can kill them, the way they seem to know exactly where you are at all times, the bloodthirst with which they attack you until you reach the first gate.

Now picture the lazy-ass imps you see for the rest of the game. The ones who are as likely to give you a kick-me sign as a stabbing, or just ignore you entirely while they play Tic Tac Toe on a your guardian's collection of 300-year-old portraits.

That's about the difference between the Special Agents during most of Sburb, and the Special Agents once you start questing on Skaia. Maybe it's Sburb's idea of a grand finale, or it thinks you're ready to face a Ringwraith now. (Or TWO if you're unlucky.)

Starting from the second you set foot on Skaia, you can expect a non-stop conga line of assassination attempts.

You should probably do something about that.

#### The Derse Archagent

Obviously, the Archagent is your biggest problem. The others are arguably stronger (well, two of them are), but his ability to hand out Regiswords makes him far more dangerous. Yes, any Carapace with a Regisword gets the same boost in aggression.

Sadly, killing him too early makes things even worse. If he dies before handing out enough Regiswords, one of the Authority Regulators will try to confiscate a crate of them, then spill it during transport and lose them. This will give you ***at least*** a dozen random carapaces with Regiswords. Yes, the infinite Regisword glitch is definitely not a glitch.

(If you don't know who the Authority Regulators are, they're those goofy cop carapaces on Derse. They're deceptively important. The game uses them to brute-force all sorts of scenarios it doesn't like, such as misplacing items that are needed for timeline stability or leaving your baby self somewhere dangerous. It tends to accidentally assign the same one to do almost every task, since whichever one leaves Derse first is the closest regulator to most events. You can learn a lot from following him around. But the important part is that incapacitating all the regulators in your session is very inadvisable. It will almost always result in paradoxes causing a doomed branch timeline.)

The rule for what counts as "too early" to kill Jack Noir changes if you observe him, so we haven't been able to quantify it and it wouldn't be very helpful if we did. It seems to require that he hands out about half a dozen swords ***without you knowing*** who received them. Generally, if you ignore Jack for the first month of your session and then kill him, you'll get the fewest possible number of Special Agents.

#### The Other Derse Agents

Honestly, you deal with the predefined ones enough normally that you should already know how to handle them. Just expect a lot less zany and a lot more deadly. Be especially careful with Courtyard Droll, he almost always has high explosives on him after this point and he does ***not*** know the difference between stable and unstable ones.

You're welcome to hunt them all down and kill or imprison them before you get to Skaia if you prefer, but if you do that Jack will retroactively turn out to have handed out more swords. The incidental Special Agents ***usually*** have lower stats and are less deadly, but they're harder to see coming. hadronDivider's session did it without killing anyone except Jack, and crimsonSkyline wiped out the whole group (by herself), so both options work.

#### The Prospit Agents

Remember these guys? Yeah, they're a problem too. The extra motivation from being in the endgame is enough to get them out of the dance hall and into action.

Maybe it's just because we're less used to them than the Derse Special Agents, but these guys tend to cause way more trouble than they should.

The tall lanky one, "Jovial Gadgeteer", likes to plant bombs in the Black Queen's palace to try to kill her. He could plant them almost anywhere in the palace and calibrate it just right to demolish her throne room (leaving her alive and pissed). Mostly you'll only ever find these by scrying on him, or because your timeline scryer saw a big crater in one of the hypothetical timelines and told you to look in the center.

The other three at least have the decency to attack directly. All three of them are pretty ninja-like. The short one tends to try to steal the ***White*** Queen's ring off her finger instead, which is only slightly better. Trust me, if either ring leaves the possession of its queen you will end up with a hostile Ringwraith eventually, it's just a matter of how many times it needs to switch hands first.

Maybe the most frustrating thing are the incidental Prospitian Special Agents (thankfully less common than Dersite ones). Many of them will just... walk up and politely ask the White Queen for her ring. Which ***works***. You can't beat them up without losing a ton of Prospit reputation (enough to usually get kicked out of the palace), so you have to either intercept them on the way there and talk them out of it, or argue against it when they make the request. Which requires a ***lot*** of social skills and Propsit rep.

You cannot kill the core group of Prospit Special Agents, because doing so counts against the Prospit War Effort and shortens your clock. However, a skilled Heart player can to keep them confined to the dance hall. If you really, ***really*** impress them with your own dance moves, and gain their trust, you can convince them to let you modify their shiny to be even more dancing obsessed than before. Just tell them it'll make them even better dancers.

Yeah I know. This is just on the borderline of what I'm willing to do to an NPC, and would definitely be over the line for a player. But it's not really a lie and it keeps them out of trouble. If it makes a difference, when I offered to undo it later they all refused.

Any half-decent Rage player can also keep them dancing by applying your aspect, but you'll have to renew it in-person once or twice an hour, so this is not sustainable.

#### Guard duty

Both queens need guarding full-time, as does the White King. So you will have at least three players tied up doing this at all times. Be sure to rotate out periodically. Once a few people have completed trials it's there's obvious incentive to use them as guards, but bear in mind your Titles and ARC.

You need a high reputation on the respective moon to spend any significant time in the Queen's throne room. It can be done, but most of the time you'll be hanging out just outside the doors until a crisis happens (which still requires a pretty good reputation). The guards will gladly let you in as soon as it becomes clear that she's under attack.

As for the Black King, agents will occasionally go after him too so in theory he's just as vulnerable as the White King. Fortunately there's an easy bug exploit to stop this. The king isn't allowed to start using his Scepter, and the associated stat boosts, until a player gets close... but the range limit is slightly wider than the range that the clouds will stop you from approaching. Get as close to him as it'll let you, he'll activate his boss mode, and then you can just leave. He'll chew up a lot more white chesspieces than he's supposed to, but it beats letting him die early.

#### * What to do if you get a __wraith *

Just give up on the whole "endgame" thing and do the Reckoning normally.

You don't want to fight a Ringwraith, you don't want to attempt the trials with a Ringwraith breathing down your neck, and you certainly don't want to fight two monarchs at once. You're already close to the end, just wrap it up and exit before they get there.

Just by being on Skaia the session is considered close to the end. If your whole team approaches the black king with intent to fight him, it may let you do so.

If you have completed at least three trials, you can ask the White King for his blessing and officially challenge the Black King. You just won't be able to use his scepter to mess up the meteor script.

If that fails, lure the wraith close to somebody's planet and get them to cast Red Miles. It will absolutely destroy enough of the stuff that you spent all game working on to trigger the Reckoning.

As for Scepterwraiths, they're a lot less deadly but they both break the scripts we're trying to exploit. Anyone claiming the Black King's scepter will immediately start the Reckoning, and if the White King doesn't have his scepter you can't complete the quest (the quest reward ***is*** the scepter). In either case, just accept the loss and go fight the final boss normally. If anything, fighting the final boss without having to worry about the extra complications for this exploit will be easier.


	6. Endgame NPCs

### NPCs

Aside from the hundreds of generic, half-soulless chess people on the battlefield, there's also a decent number of proper carapace NPCs. Like usual, some are important and some are not. Since this is a war zone, a lot of the black ones will attack you on sight, but certainly not all.

If your Prospit reputation is good, most generic white chess pieces will join up with you briefly if you are doing a quest for the White King. But only for the duration of that quest and never for two quests in a row. Generic black chess pieces are just enemies, but if your Derse reputation is especially high you might be able to talk them out of fighting (and a very negative Derse rep can occasionally scare them off). Airships never care about either reputation.

Since the game was too lazy to make two templates for every rank, gender can be a good tip-off. The only "generic" female chess pieces are airship captains and some of the pawns, so if you see a male airship captain or a female any-other-rank you can be sure you're looking at a real NPC. Most of them are obvious anyways.

Here's a spoiler for some (not nearly all) of the NPCs you will encounter:

#### White King

Your base of operations during this section. I think I've already explained well enough how his "quests" work.

You really do need to defend this guy though. Black chess pieces and anyone with a Regisword WILL try to kill him, and if they succeed you get a normal Reckoning ***at best***. He refuses to use the scepter under normal circumstances so he's pretty vulnerable. Since he's both a thing that needs defending and the primary questgiver, one player should be stationed with the king at all times.

If I'm being honest, it was pretty nice finally getting meet this guy before the game kills him off. He's got some interesting stories, and a deep understanding of the way Skaia thinks. Guard duty leaves you a lot of time to talk; don't waste it.

#### White Archbishop

He has the exact same stats as a normal bishop, but he wears a cooler robe and sticks to the King like glue. A little pompous at first, but he warms up to you. It beats having to hang out with a generic chess piece.

His main job is to make sure the king is always at full health, and to give cryptic hints about the trials. Don't expect him to help much during combat. If you somehow get a medallion without knowing which trial it was for, ask him to list the trials again to see what's left.

#### Black King

I hear this guy's kinda important.

#### Black Archbishop

Ok why does Sburb do this? Why are there NPCs who are scripted to die before you get there? What is even the point of doing this?

So yeah, the Black Archbishop. He has a cool robe, a cool voice, and you will ***never ever meet him in person***. He dies exactly eight minutes after the first player kills their Denizen, so the white army can gain some ground. You can set your watch by it.

#### AS (Aspirant Squire, if you level her up enough it becomes Ascendant Soldier instead)

A white pawn who you'll almost always encounter outside of combat, following around one of the Knights. She'll follow you around if you listen through her spiel about wanting to become stronger and defend her king, assuming you have a decent Prospit reputation. Terrible starting stats but gains XP fast. Her level cap is so high her stats would literally be equal to one of the Queens, but you don't have time to grind that much.

She's pretty useful if you want to split the party, which you do. But keeping her alive is hard.

Speaking of which: I don't want to say that this NPC was put here specifically so you could lose her for the Sacrifice trial. I would never say something like that. But what I will say is that she literally carries around a photo of her kids which she will show you during the recruitment dialog. And carapaces don't even ***have*** kids. Draw your own conclusions.

#### SK (Sketchy Knave, Sneaky Knight, etc)

Black chess knight, not initially hostile. You'll know him when you see him. He can be useful for the "get outsmarted" challenge. Saying anything more would be counterproductive.

Try not to get too mad.

#### SW and LS (Starcrossed/Starstruck/etc Warrior/Wanderer/etc, Lovestruck/Longing/etc Soldier/Sentry/etc)

Black knight and white pawn respectively. They desperately, desperately want you to engage with their sidequest.

Said sidequest was three hours of my life that I'm not getting back. So... god... damn... slow. The reward is hot garbage too.

Learn from my mistake and ignore these two idiots.

#### CF (Cowardly/Clumsy Footman/Footsoldier)

He's a black pawn who is extra easy to intimidate into surrender. Like it wasn't already easy enough to scare off pawns.

This guy honestly bugs me a bit. I feel like there MUST be a sidequest involving him, but I haven't figured out what it is yet. He's not good enough at hiding to outsmart you, and he doesn't have any useful intel. Whatever CF's purpose for existing is, it's probably not even important. But I will know no rest until I've figured it out.

#### CB (Corrupt Bishop)

Most white bishops will happily heal you to full anytime you're not in combat. This one demands an "exorbitant fee" equal to half your boondollars each time.

Yes, you can outsmart him by letting another player borrow your money. But honestly, who cares? You're losing all your money in a few days, and you should have prepared your endgame gear before you got here.

#### VG (Vigilant Guardian/Giant)

White rook. Both hadronDivider and cameraAction talk about this guy in their session reports. Supposedly he gives out repeatable sidequests which reward you with Prospit reputation for doing mostly what you were already going to do. So if you do find him, that should make your life a bit easier.

Unfortunately he was dead before I reached the battlefield in both of my sessions. If anyone figures out what scripts this guy is tied to and what (if anything) triggers his death, I will be very grateful. But it might just come down to luck.

#### King Checker

I think this guy is an Easter egg. He definitely doesn't belong here, and only shows up in about 1/4 of sessions. Look for a big section of the battlefield that both armies are avoiding.

Or better yet, don't. King Checker covers ground fast, hits like a truck, and can self-heal.

If you do wrest his crown away it's... somewhat useful? Whatever chess piece you put it on becomes giant and attacks indiscriminately. It would be super useful for killing the Black King, except that any chess piece that the Black King attacks dies in one hit unless it's a follower. And it would be sorta useful for killing squads of black chess pieces, except that the actual POINT of fighting them is to trigger your trials and this doesn't help do that.

Maybe have your time player smuggle it to their younger self? It would probably be a lot more useful in the early game.

#### CT (Confident/Courageous Templar)

A white knight, except she's also a bishop? Whatever she is, she is stupid OP. She's as strong as three rooks glued together AND she can cast everything a bishop can.

She'll join up with you for a little while if you spent a really, really long time grinding Prospit reputation. But honestly, she's TOO strong. Good luck struggling enough to complete a trial while CT is carrying your ass. You can't even use her for the low health trial because she has healing spells! Why does this chapter have to be so backwards that a follower NPC who is too strong is a handicap?

That said, if you end up with a hostile Scepterwraith, try throwing CT at it. She won't win, but she'll probably buy you a good ten minutes. Not so effective on Ringwraiths.

#### IR (Imposing/Indomitable/Invincible/Indestructible/etc Rampart, tends to change her title several times during one combat)

Possibly the only NPC more overpowered than CT. She might have even been intended as a raid boss or something.

She's a black rook with mostly normal stats, except her HP is multiplied by the number of players in your session. Oh, and she has access to some Hope aspect abilities. Which ones? Why, the ones that get stronger when you lose HP of course!

I assume you spotted the problem.

As long as you don't attack her, she's not much more threatening than the generic rooks. Ideally, you want to leave her in that state for the whole session. But if you're unfortunate enough to trigger a trial while she's nearby (including, just as a hypothetical example, the trial for trying to escape combat without fighting her), she will always get the medallion and now you have to kill her to advance. Good luck with that!

By the time she reaches half HP she can one-shot most players and ignore almost all status effects, but she does need line of sight. Abuse that. If you try to kite her too much though, she'll make a beeline for the White King to flush you out.

Before you damage her she has no resistance to being teleported, so be sure to start the fight in a favorable location that's far from your king. Beyond that, the best strategy is to alchemize a ***lot*** of land mines.

#### WV (starts as Wandering/Wayward/Woeful/etc Vassal/Villein/etc, later becomes Warweary Villager instead)

Ok this guy? This guy is my new favorite NPC. Hands down. WV is my hero.

At the start of your session this guy is a black pawn who retired to be a farmer, which already makes him cooler than most pawns on both sides. A few weeks into your session (depending on how fast you progress), he'll get so completely fed up with the constant senseless violence that is Sburb, that he starts a revolution.

And it works.

He usually recruits about a hundred other pawns from each side (and 2-3 knights or bishops). And then they march right up and confront the Black King. They don't actually kill him though (because that would be pretty dumb). Instead they bully him into signing a treaty. He designates part of the battlefield as off-limits for his army, and sticks to it. The white army doesn't have a treaty, but they leave WV alone anyways because ~~they're such nice guys~~ there's no black soldiers there to fight.

This all happens long before you get to Skaia, but if you ever get the chance to scry on him it is well worth it.

The upshot of all this is that there's a large village somewhere on the battlefield run by WV, where there's no fighting and lots of low-stakes sidequests. A handful of the villagers are proper NPCs too, comprising the ONLY shopkeepers and smith anywhere on Skaia. That alone is a huge time-saver, so you want to find him ASAP.

Better yet, as an extra screw you to Sburb's normal power structure, this village is a democracy. Or at least a "democracy". WV's official title is Mayor, which is the only such title in the entire Medium.

Do your best not to lead any soldiers from either army towards the village. Especially the white ones. They're not supposed to attack it, but tensions get pretty high.

In theory I think you could fulfill several different trials by "accidentally" getting this village destroyed, but you know what? No. This is where I draw my line in the sand. The Mayor lives happily to the end of my session, every time, or else. Every other NPC can burn if they have to.


End file.
